Cyber-Security: Continues Job Growth and Demand

It seems like every other day we hear of a new cyber security breach. Maybe that’s part of the reason hiring in this sector has experienced an 11% gain year to year.

Wanted Analytics brings us the data and figures:

After recent online security breaches, cyber security is a hot topic again. Since it’s been a while that we looked at this, we thought it would be interesting to review recent job listing for cyber security positions, the skills demanded in these jobs, and how hard-to-recruit they are likely to be. In May, over 9,800 online job listings were available for cyber security related jobs. Despite hiring demand being rather flat in 2012 so far, this is an 11% increase over the same time period last year.

It’s not too surprising that most of the hiring demand is for computer and technical occupations. The 5 most commonly advertised job titles for cyber security positions are:

Cyber Security Analyst

Cyber Security Engineer

Software Engineer

Systems Engineer

Senior Cyber Security Analyst

The most in-demand skills that Recruiters are looking for in potential candidates, other than cyber security, are listed below. Most are computer programming skills, again this isn’t too surprising since the commonly advertised jobs are all technical.

Linux

Information assurance

Firewall

UNIX

Risk management

Oracle Java

Project management

Software development

Microsoft Office

Program management

With increasing demand, these jobs are likely to be fairly difficult-to-fill. In areas that these jobs are highly demanded, Recruiters are likely to see even more challenges.. The majority of the jobs were located in Washington, DC and Baltimore metro areas. In these locations, it is likely to be more difficult and take longer than average to source enough candidates to meet the hiring demand by employers. Nationwide, the average posting period of a cyber security job ads is 6 weeks. However, in Baltimore and Washington, DC, the average posting period is 7 weeks – one full week longer than across the US.